


The Ghosts That We Knew

by brieflybe



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: M/M, Mentions of Character Death, reposted from a different pseudonym
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 22:28:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4979002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brieflybe/pseuds/brieflybe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coda to 2x06. He doesn't feel guilty. Not really. Not for how he laughs, or for how he feels – comfortable, inside his own skin; or for how he wants to kiss Simon and brush his hair back with his fingers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ghosts That We Knew

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was translated from Hebrew by the amazing lettiesocean. That's her tumblr: http://lettiesocean.tumblr.com  
> 

After the funeral they go up to his room.

Simon kicks the backpack aside, examines, once again, the various paintings posted on the walls, smiles when he notices his own portrait. The paper is almost ruined and the deep lines crack Simon's face in a way that makes Kieren think of Rick's scars. "I love it," Simon says softly, and he sounds… surprised, full of awe, like it was an honoring of sort – and not just an attempt to channel Kieren's constant thoughts of him into fingers and paper. Kieren's family stares at them from the wall, and Kieren, who's eyes are occasionally attracted to Simon's lips, is wondering how did he ever manage to convince Rick to kiss him in that spot.

It started out with Rick, actually. That is to say, it was his fault – Simon, who stares at him twice from the other side of the room, and Amy's face, and his sister's smile. Rick was a tall boy, and he had dark eyes and constantly wounded knees as a result of constantly playing football, and he would always force everyone to let Kieren play (and Kieren did not want to play. Kieren hates football, but he never wanted to say no to Rick); sometimes he would laugh at Kieren's jokes, and he used to come around with the Mutant Ninja Turtles video tape because Kieren's telly was better. He was the first thing Kieren ever drew – an evolutionary journey that started with the stick figures he was so proud of in kindergarten and ended with a boy with a crew cut and a rugby player's muscles and a cautious smile, oil on canvas.

He didn't really stop until Rick… well, until Rick stopped, as well. When they were Ten, Rick approached him and said: dad thinks it's weird that you paint me. His face had a serious look to it (thinking back, Kieren assumes that Bill Macey had quite a special way to get the message across), and Kieren shrugged and said okay. He did not stop, and Rick knew that he did not stop – He would flip through Kieren's sketchbook with a possibly warm and possibly arrogant smile larking at the corners of his mouth, until Kieren would snatch it back from him, declaring that Rick's ego was big enough as it is. Kieren would miss him forever. And now he and Amy and Simon are looking back at him, and he has no idea what they want.

"Is that what you would have done in Paris?" Simon suddenly asks quietly, and his voice is warm and cautious, and Kieren is startled.

"Yes – I mean. It was a possibility. It's not as if anyone in Roarton wants –" he runs his fingers through his hair. Rick printed the admission forms to the Sorbonne once, and put them on his bed, but it was too far away – from Jem and from Rick and from this air, that you can only breathe in towns like theirs – and sometimes he felt like Rick is trying to drive him away. He swallows hard and says what Simon wants to hear. "I didn't have a plan. Not a real one. The plan was just, not being here. You know that."

Simon arches his eyebrows at him. "Well, that could have worked perfectly. France is definitely not in England."

Kieren rolls his eyes, chuckles. "Shut up."

He doesn't feel guilty. Not really. Not for how he laughs, or for how he feels – comfortable, inside his own skin; or for how he wants to kiss Simon and brush his hair back with his fingers. Except for – well. He accidentally wore his contact lenses this morning, out of habit, and then spent a minute or two trying to remember what his real eye color was before taking them out. The yellow in his eyes isn't pretty – pale doesn't suit him. In 2009, he wouldn't have let anyone take a photograph of him this way. He loves Amy for making her beauty ideal individual; for finding other people who acted like she did.  
Amy looked like a china doll who decided she's unbreakable, a ghost who decided she's alive, and her will stated that Kieren isn't allowed to feel guilty about what makes him happy (and that if he feels guilty, he's not allowed to feel guilty for feeling guilty).

So he looks at Simon and thinks that he looks like an old picture of Dracula, that he dresses a little bit like the street performers on the tube ("the word you're looking for is homeless," Jem remarked, and Kieren threw a piece of his omelet at her. He's undead; food is now his weapon of choice). Kieren is always pissed at him, but it's a good feeling (Kieren loved Rick the same way he defined himself as an artist – it was part of his identity. And when Rick was gone, Kieren didn't know what to do without this part) – it feels like something is beating in his chest, like blood is flowing to his cheeks. When they first met, Simon was incredibly impressive and incredibly weird and was talking about Kieren as if he knows him – although he didn't, not at all, if anything he knew Kieren's tombstone better. He listened to him and Amy's propaganda speeches (which were true. The slogans were true. They just – made him angry. He wanted peace and quiet and he wanted it right now and he was mad), and sort of wanted – to, well, shout, to tell him to go away, to shake him, a little. He thought he knew why Amy fancied Simon – the charisma, the crooked way he smiled and how his eyes seem to grow wider instead of subside when he looks at you. And that made Kieren mad, as well.

He doesn't feel guilty about Amy, and he doesn't feel guilty about Rick, and he doesn't feel guilty about Simon, and he doesn't feel guilty about himself, not really –

If he closes his eyes, sometimes Rick's painting is clearer than the memory of his face. It is made out of Kieren's clumsy brush strokes, and that’s gotta be some kind of a metaphor – a really fucking stupid metaphor – and when it happened for the first time, Kieren refused to paint for five whole days.

He doesn't feel guilty, but they're weighing on his chest, and that's fine, because Kieren loves them.

Simon moves around the room like he's discovering a new world, his eyes dancing towards Kieren every once in a while, until he says firmly: "tell me if you change your mind about Paris, will you?"

As if Kieren has not yet refused, and gave a touching speech, and showed that he really did learn something from Amy, and imagined she's probably proud of him and that if she was here, she would –

Simon swallows hard. "I'll take you there."

Kieren's not sure what to say, and his hand is trembling, it's always trembling, and he's not sure why – he feels okay, he feels absolutely fine, really. Simon comes closer with two big steps, and he wraps his fingers around Kieren's palm.

"I'm okay," Kieren says, and his voice doesn't sound right, and he doesn't know what's making his body function right now, but it seems like it has stopped working. For a moment, he thinks he might be freezing (he clasped Simon coat when he bent down to kiss him; they're British, and they will probably remember the coldness of the winter after they'll forget everything else. The sky is grey, and the wind is blowing, and the clouds are pouring at you, and you can't get the flu or feel anything or die, but you're wearing a fuckingcoat).  
"I meant what I said. I wouldn't have said it otherwise."

Simon kisses him, and it seems to Kieren that this is the first time (Kieren was always the one to close the distance between them, and Simon – he always wanted to, but then he had to stop and look), and he closes his eyes, and his hand is shaking even harder, and then it stops, and Simon's grip tightens.

When they say goodbye, he stares at Kieren with the same look that is full of awe (and Kieren doesn't know how he feels about that look – he only knows he'll miss it if itwill disappear), and he runs his fingers over his shoulder, his neck, until they lay on his cheek. After the un-eaten-lunch-from-hell with Gary, Kieren tried to remove their makeup; and he was thinking that they looked so alike, and that he feels so close… to himself, to him, to being enlightened about something. And Simon looked like him then, but different: the chemicals started to work and brought back those eternal and strange levels of fear, and they're there, in his eyes, pulsing out of the scars on his wrist, and there it is – there, they're the same.

He says, "Relax a little, Kieren." And then, "whatever you want." And he puts his forehead against Kieren's, and Kieren thinks about how he doesn't really want to be in a different category than what Simon believes in, thinks about how power makes him nervous – it makes something in his chest tighten and –

Simon jumped in front of a bullet for him and earned a wound that will not become a scar – a wound that will just exist, and he's still alive. Only, now Kieren knows that this is a person who will jump in front of a bullet for him, and that is way too much power.

"Kieren."

"You're going to have to give up your superpower for this," he says quietly.

Simon arches his eyebrows. "My superpower?"

"Disappearing."

Simon smiles, and if Kieren had a functioning heart, it would have been beating faster. "I gave it up."

"You did?"

He bites his bottom lip, and strokes Kieren's skin with his thumb. "Saving the world didn't really work out for me, you know."

"You don't say."

Simon nods once. "So I'm here now." He says it slowly, carefully, somewhat like he was explaining something to a child and somewhat like he was reciting an oath. "And if you'll be in Paris, that's where I'll be." He kisses Kieren above his eye. "And if you'll be in – "

"I was thinking about Congo."

"Yeah, no, you're going there alone."

So Kieren kisses him again, and then again, and his hand shake forcefully, and then a little less so, and when Simon sinks his teeth into his bottom lip he feels – he really wants to take a breath, for a moment, but there's no air suited for him – and that's probably a metaphor as well and it's probably just as stupid, but he can't bring himself to notice.

**Author's Note:**

> The name of the fic is from the song: Ghosts That We Knew by Mumford & Sons. Apparently my In the Flesh work is Mumford themed.


End file.
